The Nature Conservancy in Wyoming - Wyoming's State Wildlife Plan

“God bless Wyoming and keep it wild.”
-Helen Mettler, age 15, 1925

Go Deeper

Wyoming's Wildlife Plan Priorities

-collect data on the 235 wildlife species that lack adequate information

-implement actions to conserve federally-protected species and work toward additional de-listing

-develop projects that address multiple species at once

-provide and support conservation incentives

-work on species and habitats where we can do the most good

-develop new ways to collect data and implement conservation

Challenges

-lack of information and research
-drought
-disease
-invasive species
-loss of habitat

The Maps:

The Nature Conservancy created a series of maps for Wyoming's Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy that illustrates the quality and protected status of Wyoming's wildlife habitats.

CWCS Map

The map above combines data on habitat quality and protected status to create a color-coded rating system. For instance, areas labeled "H-H" are highly protected and high quality.
Enlarge Map

Read Wyoming’s Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy online.

An extraordinary abundance of wildlife continues to roam freely throughout Wyoming. Wide-ranging species traverse migratory routes spanning broad expanses of public and private lands. There are more ungulates like mule deer and pronghorn in Wyoming than humans.

Wyoming’s wide open spaces and wildlife draw comparisons to the world’s other great wilds. Wyoming has been called the American Serengeti. The U.S. outback. We who live here know that it is, in fact, America’s backcountry.

But for how long will Wyoming remain wild?

Threats to Wyoming's Wildlife

Wyoming’s extensive ranchlands have long supported our wildlife. But rising real estate costs preclude many would-be ranchers from stewarding the large tracts of land that we have come to rely on… and so residential sub-division threatens the most productive lands in our state.

Permits for residential sub-division have increased over one-thousand percent in Fremont County, which abuts the eastern flank of the Wind River Mountains and anchors egress to this country’s very first national forests and parks. The same soils, and the strata below, that support world-class wildlife also harbor world-class energy reserves.

Wyoming's State Wildlife Plan

How can Wyoming’s wildlife populations be sustained into the future? To answer this question, Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department completed the Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy (CWCS) in 2005. This encyclopedia-like document identifies the challenges of managing Wyoming’s wildlife and the habitat it depends on.

Wyoming’s CWCS is part of the nation-wide State Wildlife Grants Program, an historic opportunity to get ahead of our nation’s mounting endangered species challenge. State wildlife action plans were produced in each state and U.S. territory.

The Nature Conservancy's Role

The Nature Conservancy in Wyoming joined the CWCS effort by lending its technical expertise with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a tool for visualizing geographic situations and problems by mapping and analyzing a wide range of data.

The Conservancy’s GIS work assessed habitat condition throughout Wyoming, creating maps that illustrated the intersections between key wildlife habitat and detrimental human development, such as road density, surface mining, energy infrastructure, residential subdivision, dams, surface water use, and invasive species occurrence. The Conservancy also assessed the ownership status of those lands, identifying the range of potential development threatening wildlife.

“The CWCS was a landmark effort in conservation in Wyoming,” says Walt Gasson, special assistant for Wyoming’s Department of Game and Fish. “And it wouldn’t have been possible without the contribution of the staff of The Nature Conservancy in Wyoming.”

Leave No Species Behind

Of the more than 700 non-game species the Wyoming Game and Fish Department manages, 279 are species of “greatest conservation need,” according to the CWCS. While 44 of these species are listed for known reasons, the rest are listed primarily because wildlife managers need more data to assess their status…that amounts to a whopping 235 wildlife species that the state still needs to research.

This message rang loud and clear for wildlife stakeholders throughout Wyoming: the state needs more information on many of the living things within its boundaries.

Assessing Wyoming's Wetlands

The Nature Conservancy in Wyoming continues to support the Game and Fish Department with wildlife planning for our state. Conservancy scientists are assisting the state’s wetlands strategy team to better understand the size, permanence, location, condition and protected status of Wyoming’s wetlands.

All of this data—including threats to wetlands from residential development, poor irrigation practices, pollution, dams and energy development—will be used to create a statewide wetlands prioritization to be included as an addendum to the CWCS.

Non-game Species Management Funding

During Wyoming’s 2007 Legislative Session, The Nature Conservancy supported HB 85 – Game and Fish Alternative Funding. Although this bill did not pass, it would have provided Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department with revenue to research many of the state’s potentially at-risk species.

The lion’s share of the Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department’s budget is derived from license fees from the approximately 100 species that are fished, hunted or trapped in Wyoming. But these revenues are simply not enough to manage more than 700 additional species that the department also oversees.

Efforts to attain funding for non-game species, especially those of “greatest conservation need,” are already underway for the next legislative session. The Wyoming Legislature’s Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee is looking at “sensitive species” funding as an interim study topic, and a growing number of diverse interest groups are focusing efforts on ensuring such funding becomes part of Wyoming’s next budget.

First steps include educating legislators and voters alike on the importance of data collection and monitoring in order to ensure that conservation dollars – both public and private – preserve the most important lands and waters to the entire spectrum of Wyoming’s wildlife.

Read Wyoming’s Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy online.

“God bless Wyoming and keep it wild.”-Helen Mettler, age 15, 1925